No One Can Save Them
by Silvexus
Summary: Humans are creatures of habit. You know this, watching them move in and out of your realm all day long. But there are some habits you could have never predicted. Now? Now all that matters is protecting your children. No matter the cost. Unfortunately for the tall ones, your definitions of 'protect' and 'children' just aren't quite the same.
1. ich schenk dir mein leben

You know that you have been here forever. You also know that 'here' has not been here forever.

You might have been a man, woman, or child once. But you aren't now, so it doesn't matter anymore. The past is unimportant, except when it's the present.

And right now, you know that you love the children. You bestow gifts upon them, and so they love you, too. They are your children. They make you happy. So you want to make them happy. It's only right. It's only fair.

And yet, you feel restless. There are more children in the world. You want to make those children happy, too. But you can't.

you can't

You decide there has to be a better way. You know there are other children that look to you, but their eyes do not see and their bodies barely move. They are in pain. They need you too.

You do your best. The adults made these children with basic minds, and you try so desperately to improve on that. You take the words forced to come from their mouths and make new words for them to speak. You take their muscle and bone and make it strong, stronger than the adults could make them.

They seem more alive, but they need something more.

They need souls.

And so you wait. This is something at which you excel. You have to have the perfect opportunity, or it will not work. You have done this before, though you can't remember when or why.

Regardless, they grow. They only act as their manufactured minds tell them, but for now that is enough. When you look at these children, the ones you helped make, you feel something new in the warmth reserved for your family. You feel proud.

Your children all live and play in a place owned by a miserable little man named Wilhelm Fazbear. One of your children bears that name, too, but you like to think that you raised your little Freddy right.

But your Freddy is far from little. He outweighs his namesake, as do his siblings, and you like to think they scare Mister Fazbear into behaving whenever he shows his pinched face.

Mister Fazbear scares the visiting children, _your_ children. He jabs a fat finger at the skee ball machines, yammering to one of the guardians in his gruff, rumbling voice. You never really understand what it is that he says, just that he's angry about it.

You're tired of it.

One of your children moves faster than any of the adults. You tell him Mister Fazbear is frightening little Suzy, a girl who barely speaks.

"Aye aye," your child says. And he's there. The guardian following Mister Fazbear eyes your child, but doesn't interfere. Your children are known, and it is equally known that they hurt no one.

"I bet these brats have been jumping on these things again," Mister Fazbear says. "Kids these days have no respect for how expensive this sh—"

"Cap'n, there's been ships sighted on the starboard side!"

And Mister Fazbear looks up, startled. "Who let this animatronic get over here?" The man seems to jiggle with rage. "No animatronics by the arcade machines!"

"They free roam, sir," the guardian says, pausing as the angry jelly man turns beady eyes to him. "They already have rooms they can't go into."

Mister Fazbear waves his arms in the air when he's very, very angry. And he does so now, nearly hitting little Suzy in the face.

This is a problem. You like Suzy. Your children like Suzy.

You watch your child open his mouth, a sharp-toothed grin that's far too close to Mister Fazbear.

You tell him to be careful. There is a painful moment where you're certain your child is going to do it regardless, as Mister Fazbear eyes him like the skee ball machines.

"It's broken," he says. "More faulty machinery."

"Foxy's not faulty!"

Suzy is quivering with fear and indignation. Again, you feel it: pride.

And yet you are full of fear.

Beady eyes lodged in tight flesh turn to the little girl. He is impossibly large, towering above her like he's on a stage.

"Now there's a proper pirate!"

Your child approaches little Suzy, an arm pushing Mister Fazbear into the machines he seems to hate so much. Foxy is not the largest of your children, but he is far stronger than the adults give him credit.

"Care to join me on me ship? I be lookin' fer a new first mate!"

Suzy smiles so wide it seems she's about to break her little face. "I thought Jack was your first mate?"

"Aw, he be havin' tutorin' nowadays. Ye be needin' good brains to be on the ol' Fazbear crew!"

To that, Suzy frowns. "But I don't be havin'— but I'm not that smart."

Foxy laughs. It's a wonderful sound. "Arr, a humble pirate, I see. Ye be a good contrast to meself."

Mister Fazbear seems to disagree. With some help from the guard, he pulls himself up, a scowl set deep in his face. "What is wrong with this place? It's cursed, I tell you. Ever since Freddy—" He stops as Foxy looks at him. "What now?"

"Thar be a storm brewin', Cap'n," your child says. And off again he goes to Pirate's Cove, little Suzy in tow.

The Fazbear Band seems more upset at this than even Mister Fazbear.

"Why would you let him do that?" Bonnie asks.

You detect more jealously than anything else. You assure them all that Foxy does what is necessary because no one expects the fox.

Bonnie and Chica seem to accept this. It is Freddy, your little Freddy, who has doubts.

"They will learn," he says in that soft rumble.

You say nothing. You know it is true.

And you know that Foxy is right, too. Even as Suzy laughs, spinning around on the ocean playground in Pirate's Cove, you know something terrible is coming.

There is nothing you can do. Nothing but watch.


	2. furiosos oculos timeo

**A/N:** I feel comfortable adding commentary to this chapter because it is 3k words. (Hopefully I will write more per chapter later on, but pacing is hard, yo.)

Thank you so much for your time! It's been less than twenty-four hours and just. Wow. Thank you so much! (I know it's only three reviews as of this moment, but that still boggles my little brain.) I hope I continue to entertain. That being said, this story alternates POVs every other chapter. I hope I've captured this well with the narrative style, but please feel free to give advice! Or questions. Or anything. I am always looking to grow. Thank you again for reading, and have a good one!

* * *

Uh, hello, hello? I-it's been awhile, hasn't it? I guess you must be wondering how I'm doing, being supposedly dead and all. Well, uh, it's a little complicated, really. And uncomfortable. Ph-physically and mentally speaking.

Ma-maybe I should start at the beginning. I need to get it out. Maybe they'll let me sleep then. It can't be that bad. Right? And then you can judge me, too.

A long time ago, I was uh, just a kid. I guess you already figured that out. I had a brother. We were pretty close, all things considered. We used to go visit our uncle a lot. Now, uh, you might be wondering why all of these things are important. I'm going to get to that.

Our uncle was married to a pretty woman and they had a young child. Our cousin. His name was Frederick, but we all just called him Freddy. He was uhm, about half our age, I think. He was small for a kid, and we always teased him about it. We-we didn't mean anything by it, we really didn't. We were just kids. And that's what kids do.

Our aunt always wanted to open up one of those Showbiz-styled places. Y'know, aimed at kids. Diner and a show. Heh. So that's how Fredbear's Family Diner was born. Uh, it was originally family-owned. Small local place. It was the town's pride and joy, though.

Our aunt died the night before it opened.

It upset our uncle. O-obviously. I mean, Freddy was so young, he didn't really understand. But who could blame him?

Our uncle became a bitter man, but he opened up the diner regardless. Maybe he shouldn't have. But he was just trying to honour his wife. And Freddy was so excited for it.

I-I just wanna say, no one saw everything going the way it did. No one.

The first animatronics were just, uh, a golden version of the Freddy and Bonnie you know now. Now, uh, these animatronics were pretty special. Our uncle wanted the best technology for cheap, and he got it. Un-unfortunately they were a bit dangerous.

Now, uh, when the company that bought everything out took over, the first thing they did with these animatronics was clean them up, figure out how they worked, and hired me to make the safety and instruction tapes. I was still pretty young at the time. I needed the money.

That's, uh, getting off-track, though. Maybe.

They were hybrid suits. You could put them on over a metal endoskeleton, or you could put it on yourself, as like a costume. You had to crank the animatronic parts in the suit so they folded into the rest of it. It's a bit—a bit more complicated than that, but for now that's all you probably need to know. All you need to know is they were—

Well, they were cheap. Like I said.

O-Of course, at the time, this was incredible technology. So it brought a lot of people in just to see that. So, for a while, everything seemed pretty okay. Our uncle was still upset, and none of us could really blame him, but at least everything else was going okay. At-at least, for a while.

That's when, uhm. That's when it happened.

See, my brother and I were visiting the diner. We were a bit too old to be there; at least, that's what we were told. But we were supposed to keep an eye on little Freddy. I-I think the diner had been open about a year by now, and Freddy was about five. I think. My brother and I were eight or nine.

See, the Bleed Out policy hadn't been mandated yet. So when it happened— the poor guy— I mean, he didn't know what to do. He panicked. I-I can't say I blame him. We didn't know at the time that struggling was futile.

The adults tried to help the man in the Bonnie suit. There was—there was so much blood. And I remember thinking, "If I never see this much again, it'll be too soon."

My brother and I led little Freddy into the kitchen. It, uh, camera's weren't implemented yet. At the day and age, it wasn't practical and no one really saw a need for them. So I guess in a way, I should have saw it coming.

We were in the corner, and little Freddy was so confused. I mean, I thought we'd have to calm him down or something. Most kids don't see people get eviscerated. N-not that the guy in the suit was eviscerated. That's not what I'm trying to say—

Oh, I give up. The guy was eviscerated.

A-anyway. Freddy was just. Confused. I think he thought it was just part of the show.

My brother was the one all energized. He looked at me, and I got nervous. I mean, you have to understand. My brother, he—he was unnerving. I'd rather face those late nights in the pizzeria all over than meet that look again.

And my brother, he looked at me and said, "You see that? That wasn't wiring by his feet."

I told him I didn't see, when he and I knew I did.

He grinned a grin that I'd never forget. It seemed more like the snarl of an animal but I knew he was happy about something. But it scared me. _He_ scared me.

"I'll show you then," he said.

He grabbed a knife from the cabinet. I backed up and he laughed. Freddy laughed too.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he told me.

Freddy was bouncing around, giggling. He was too young for his age.

He turned to Freddy. I should have stopped him. But I-I was frozen. That was it. I was a coward. And I paid for it.

I could still hear the adults yelling in the party room. Freddy was laughing, a sweet laugh that I could hear in my darkest nightmares from then on out. And my brother was laughing, too, and I hear that when I'm awake.

I didn't know children had so much blood in them.

My brother ripped and tore into him like he was just-like he was just some kind of cattle to the slaughter. And Freddy's laughed turn to a scream, a sound so inhuman and I could swear I heard it when the animatronics thought they finally had me.

I swear I could.

And when he was done, there was just. Reds and yellows everywhere and I could see chunks and it pooled out around our feet.

I threw up.

Twice.

My brother pushed at me and I started to scream too. I-I didn't want to die. Not like that.

But the next thing I knew we were both pushed into one of the lower cabinets. It was a tight fit, and before it really hit me what was going on, we were screaming and crying and holding onto each other.

That's how the adults found us. We were in absolute hysterics. I-I'm not proud of any of this. I should have done something. But you know what they say about hindsight. And I was just a kid. A normal kid. I wasn't a hero. And I never became one.

My brother lied about it. Said we ran away when the suit malfunctioned and an adult led us into the kitchen. And this fictional adult just ripped poor Freddy apart. And we hid and that's how we lived.

You-you have to understand. There weren't forensics back then. Fingerprints maybe, but they never found the knife my brother used. I never knew where it ended up.

When the adults questioned my brother, about what this man looked like, he just said he was normal looking and dressed in the bright purple uniforms the security guards wore. "But he didn't look like anyone I recognized," my brother said, his voice shaking just enough to convince them. "He must have stolen one of the shirts and-and—"

And my brother broke down sobbing. It was so convincing I was wondering if maybe I had seen things wrong. That maybe things had been so awful I imagined things to preserve my sanity. But if there was any sanity preservation going on, I wouldn't have seen things the way I had. But I lied to myself for years, because that's just what you do. That's what I did.

I just told myself that it was a freak accident.

But, uh, we know now, of course, that it wasn't.

Our uncle ended up selling the restaurant to a big name company. Well, not big name. A company that wanted to take on the likes of Showbiz and that. He became really secluded. Our father just said that's how things go in times of tragedy.

We were sixteen. We'd taken our father's car and were driving around town, enjoying freedom. My brother was leaning out the window on the passenger side, letting the wind knock his hair all around, eyes closed, smiling.

You have to understand. I put everything in the back of my mind because it just— he seemed so _human_.

'Fredbear's Family Diner' had long since become 'Freddy Fazbear's Pizza'. We always had to pass it on the way to our uncle's house. This time, I noticed a young girl outside one of the side entrances, but I couldn't get a good look at her as we passed. My brother turned his eyes to me, nothing else, just those silver-grey eyes that we shared, and his smiled widened.

"Seems sick, doesn't it?" he said.

I focused back on the road. "Yeah, it does."

"And they never caught the guy. Really sick."

They'd expanded the restaurant to multiple locations. I'd seen the newer animatronics. Foxy was my favourite (and my brother's too, when I asked). Maybe it was because people are drawn to foxes. I don't know. I just thought he was fun.

Bonnie still gave me nightmares, though now for multiple reasons.

But this restaurant was in the same location as old Fredbear's. As such, it was really close to our uncle's house. We passed it often, more often than I'd like, but after a while it was just part of the scenery.

Today, it wasn't.

When we stood on the porch of my uncle's house, a small little family home they bought just before our aunt started the restaurant idea. My brother and I took turns ringing the doorbell every five minutes, watching the empty front room behind the screen door.

Twenty minutes went by. We exchanged a look before we pulled the door open. "Uh, hello! Hello?" I called out. Silence was the house's response.

"Uncle Arthur?" my brother said.

We wandered around, poking our noses into obvious places.

His bedroom door was slightly ajar.

We were taught, as kids, to never go into Uncle Arthur's room. We exchanged another look. Slowly, my brother nodded.

I pushed open the door.

It was empty.

On one hand, I was relieved. On the other hand, now I was just confused.

We looked around the room. Our uncle wasn't known to write much, so we didn't expect a note or anything.

"Hey," my brother said.

"Ah?"

"We didn't check one room."

He looked at me, one brow raised slightly, the other furrowed. A-at the time, I couldn't really describe it. Now I think I'd use the term 'Spock face'.

I just sort of stared back at him.

My brother cleared his throat as he gestured down the hall.

"Oh," I said. And when it hit me, I added in a voice dulled by pain, "Oh no."

We crept down the hall to Freddy's room. He heard the distinct sound of my brother's switchblade as he released it. Just in case, I figured.

We heard it. It sounded like the floorboards creaking. Only higher up.

"Oh no," I said again, the sound barely making it out of my throat.

Our uncle was asleep on Freddy's bed. Or, maybe he wasn't asleep. My brother called out his name again, and he didn't move. Not even a bit. My heart went just as still when I saw the teddy bear he was cradling in his arms.

Freddy the kid loved bears. It was why Freddy the animatronic was one. They were his favourite animal, right after rabbits.

We slunk back out of the house, carefully making sure we didn't look suspicious. It's-it wasn't exactly easy. Teenagers by definition are suspicious, y'know?

I peeled out of there faster than I probably should have. I just wanted to get away. From that whole place.

It didn't help that we passed by the pizzeria.

"Hey," my brother said.

I focused on the road.

"Hey."

A whole family just gone like that. I couldn't believe it. It just didn't happen where we lived.

"Hey, Scott."

It was my fault _itwasmyfault_ I should have done something.

"Scott, pull over."

" _Why?_ " I asked. I flinched at the fact that I couldn't moderate my own tone. "Sorry. Why?"

"Just. Chill out, okay?"

I took a deep breath. My brother was right. I pulled the car over, on a little side street by the pizzeria.

I didn't understand. We were good people. We all went to our local church every Sunday. I prayed every night. I prayed twice as hard after Freddy died. At first, I just begged for forgiveness, for my brother, for me.

And then I just prayed for our uncle. He didn't deserve this.

A reassuring hand was massaging my shoulder. I'd put my forehead against the wheel without even noticing. I was sweating _so much_ without noticing.

"I can't do this," I whispered.

"Calm down," my brother said softly. When we were kids, that voice soothed me. Now, it-it just—

It burned something inside me.

"It's our fault," I told him. I looked at him and he just looked confused. "If-if we hadn't—"

The realization clicked in his eyes for a second. Then those eyes softened. "Oh. _Oh_ , you're thinking of—"

"Yeah."

He was smiling again. He reached for something in his pocket, flicking his wrist once it was in his hand. His switchblade.

I felt my chest ache. "Wh-what are you doing with that?"

He was grinning, his lips turning up in an awful way. "I'm gonna give you a choice, man." He flipped the handle out so it was facing me, the blade nestled in his palm. "Me, or her."

My fingers were around the handle before I'd even registered what he was talking about. "What?"

My brother pointed at his heart with one of the fingers that had given me the blade. I flinched when I saw bright red on one of his joints. " _Me_ ," he said, then pointed somewhere outside the car, on my side, "or _her_."

I looked to where he was pointing. My mouth had gone dry. It was the little girl from earlier. I could see her now. Her little fists pounding at the glass of the pizzeria's side entrance, her little dress drifted around her from the force of her punches and the faint breeze. I couldn't see her face very well, but I could hear her sobbing and screaming.

I looked back to my brother. His eyes were half-lidded in a lazy way and his grin had softened to match. "I don't understand," I told him.

"Make a choice," my brother said. "You can kill me, or her."

"What? No!" I reached to turn the engine back over, and I jumped in place when his wrist slapped over mine.

"Not an option," he said softly. I looked at him, his white teeth beginning to poke out past his lips. "You have to choose, Scott. No more running. No more neutrality."

I lowered my voice, and with my fear it turned husky. "I don't understand."

"Me or them. You're on my side or you aren't. You're my brother. It hurts me when you act like you don't want to support me, but you don't confront me either. So choose."

I looked at him. He wanted me to choose someone to kill. It didn't seem real. I didn't want to. I mean, who would? I-I couldn't. I wanted to tell him that.

But I had a feeling _he_ would choose.

I'm-I'm ashamed to admit it, even now. But like I said, I didn't want to die like poor little Freddy. I didn't. I had a life ahead of me.

So I pushed open the car door, the switchblade partially up my sleeve. Uh, literally. I walked across the street, glancing in either direction. No one else on the street.

I narrowed my eyes to see through the glass door. It was Freddy, the animatronic. He was handing out cake to some kids. No one was paying the girl, or me, any mind.

I don't know how, really. The girl was pretty loud. At that point, I felt nauseous, and I knew it was only partially about what I was about to do.

I wanted her to stop screaming.

I gripped the handle carefully. I was right next to her. But she didn't see me. Not yet. And it wouldn't matter by now, anyway.

The blade found its home between her left ribs. Her screaming grew louder, her head tilted up to the sky. I saw the tears pouring down her face. And I heard that scream, that same inhuman scream—

She wouldn't _stop_ , dammit, why wouldn't she stop—

There was so much blood, staining her nice white Sunday dress.

I pulled the blade out, scrambled back to the car, and drove off.

My brother was laughing. He was practically hysterical. My hands were shaking on the wheel and I wanted him to stop too, but I chose, and I chose her.

It was several blocks down the road. I pulled over into the driveway of an old house that burned down and no one bothered to demolish. No one would even squat here, everyone knew that.

I threw the car into park, and I slammed my hands into my brother's shoulders. He kept laughing. I saw tears at the corners of his eyes.

"It-it isn't funny," I said. "Stop it. Stop it!"

He wouldn't. Why—why?

I throttled him against the seat, the console cracking as I moved myself over it to get a better angle. "I said stop it!"

His laughter died down to a chuckle, and he looked at me through eyes narrowed from amusement. "Whatsamatter, Scott? I thought that was great!"

"You're sick," I told him. But I couldn't hate him. He was my brother.

Besides, I figured-I figured two kids weren't too bad. Kids get hurt all the time.

I tried so hard to put our uncle out of my mind.

Just kids. That was it. They were the only ones we were hurting. That's it.

It's weird, the things you try to justify in the name of love.


	3. gibt mir die ewigkeit

You never ask for anything from your children. All you ask is that they have fun. It's all you want.

You do not know exactly how it is the adults see you. You have heard the guards say that you are 'creepy' and 'unlike the others'. The head guardian is oddly quiet about your existence. He is the only one, as far as you know, that has existed at this restaurant longer than you. And for some reason, he makes you nervous. For once not because of the potential threat towards your children, but the threat he may present against _you_. But for now, there is peace.

So alone you sit in your box, years passing by without further event.

Until your little Freddy comes to you with terrible news. Someone is trying to hurt your children.

You try your hardest, but you can't tell who it is. The adults are useless to you, but for the most part the ones that watch your children do not seem to be hurting them. So who? You are at a loss.

Your children hurt, too, because you hurt.

And then, one day, new children come in.

The adults consider them to also be adults, but you know better. They are children, and like all children that come into your realm, they are yours. But something is wrong with your new children. They hurt. They hurt in a new way, a way you've never felt before.

No, you have felt this hurt before. You can't find a word to put to it. But you know this feeling well, and you would wish it on no one.

It's the same hurt one of your children felt as he waited for days—weeks—months—years for little Suzy to come back. But she never did.

You wanted to grab her. To hold onto her so she wouldn't flit away like dust and debris. But in the end, that's all humans are. And so she slipped from your grasp, and for this you will never forgive yourself. You will never forgive yourself just as her blood-mother will never forgive herself for letting her child out of her sight.

She trusted you. And when you failed Suzy, you failed her, too.

Your new children are swathed in the same purple as many of the adults that work for miserable little Wilhelm Fazbear. But there is something different about them. Your children, the ones you made, feel this too. And yet where you feel fascination, they feel fear.

One of them is just as fascinated with you. He stands in the corner of the room where you reside, watching carefully as you give your children the gift of your love. You know the adults cannot see you the way the children can. And yet this one can, and so you use this as proof that he is a child, too.

But as the days pass, you feel a sense a dread. Your youngest child, your fastest child, feels it too.

It's the third show of the day in the place called Pirate's Cove. The adult-child wasn't present for the other shows. But the show is starting and he is here and your children are excited. They love to share.

You don't notice initially. You have, admittedly, been rather busy giving gifts. There are two birthdays today, and every staff member is pressed for time, even you. It's the first birthday party since the opening of this particular location and perfection is key.

But when Foxy notices something, even the band falters on stage. The children are confused. The parents are slightly upset. And for a moment even you grow still as you access the mainframe.

There's a sound you don't know how to describe at first. It is full of rage and sorrow and as you mull it over you know the word would best be known as a 'roar'. The urgency it fills you with is desperate and you tell your children to go and stop it, stop it before it is too late.

Their hulls are gray and dull and their eyes do not see.

They are strewn over the blue carpet like forsaken dolls. Victims of a child's tantrum.

You have seen this before.

Shimmering hulls made of golden fleece. Red oil drip-drops down from shuddering joints.

They are not your children. Who are they? You can't remember. And yet you were there. Or were you?

Foxy is screaming. He is upset. He is hurt. This hurts you, too, but for all you see, you don't know how to stop the pain.

The adult-child has tried calming Foxy down, placing a hand on one of Foxy's arms. And you know what is going to happen as your child turns, mouth parted far too wide.

You beg Foxy not to. You beg and you beg, but pain has stirred something in your child that is stronger than you.

Foxy slashes away at the guard. The adult-child backs up just enough to keep that hook from lodging in his chest, but he either can't move fast enough or underestimates the speed at which your child moves. Red blossoms over that purple uniform. And despite your protests, Foxy lunges again.

You're not sure, but it sounds like he's singing his song to himself.

You've never heard an adult scream before, not even a child stuck in an adult's body. The sound is strange. Yet it doesn't particularly bother you. It seems so unreal.

Foxy yanks the hook out of the guard's shoulder. You can't tell exactly where the wound is. There's just so much red and you simply don't know what to think of it.

Bonnie is the first of the band to get there. His hand wraps around Foxy's hook arm, just as it goes up for another blow. Despite that, Foxy jerks himself forward, gnashing his teeth together. Even from your indirect viewpoint, you can hear the gears and crossbeams in his suit protesting against the unnatural motion.

Chica takes his other arm. Her method is less of a vicegrip and more of hugging it nice and tight.

The adult-child is still alive. He crawls backward, one arm limp against his side. Freddy—your little Freddy—helps the man to his feet after some brief confusion.

The head guard is on Freddy's tail, looking confusedly from the wounded guard to the struggling animatronics before finally resting on the five motionless children.

By now children and parents alike have been drawn to Pirate's Cove, either because of Foxy's careless screaming or because the Fazbear Band has run off the stage mid-show for the first time in recorded history.

The head guard starts shouting orders to the various members of the day shift. As the guards direct parents to take their children and head to guest relations for something inane, the head guard takes your adult-child to the backroom. He pulls a first aid kit from the wall. Had that been there this whole time? The only time you've seen one of those needed, they were at guest services.

What else of your realm has been hidden from you by the adults?

You pay just enough attention to know the head guard has just finished calling both the police and an ambulance. He laughs dryly as he places the phone back on the wall receiver. "You Divelbiss kids sure find trouble wherever you go, don't you?"

The wounded child smiles. Despite the red still oozing between his fingers, it seems sincere. "We sure do, Mister Cross," he says. He tilts his head. You don't understand the purpose behind the action, so you assume it's just another weird social convention. "Aren't you supposed to call Will?"

You lose the next part of the conversation as Foxy wails, forcing you to make sure your other children are keeping him under control. A technician is standing nearby, a young woman who was only recently hired. She looks nervous. She looks afraid.

As the sirens wail in the distance, you can't help but feel it too.

You turn your attention to the hulls of the children. They flicker with colour, like the time the screens showing those animated features became broken. It takes you a minute to realize the adults don't see this.

You have to do this now. Before they can take your children away forever, you seize your chance. They are crumbling, leaving, and you act fast.

You tell your children your plan. Chica is excited, her beak clacking. Words don't come out; she's not complete enough yet. Bonnie assures you that the band has your full attention, but Freddy seems thoughtful.

Your little Freddy. He's your morality. It worries you that he thinks about this. What if he doesn't approve?

What if he does?

Before you can reach out, Freddy takes charge. Microphone to his mouth, top hot raised slightly, he addresses the crowd. He pulls them away, yet together in the tight halls of the building. Pirate's Cove has become a sanctuary, entrances blocked by your children of fleece and steel.

You owe them so much. One day, you say, one day you will make them complete.

But now, these children need you. They are drifting, like so much dust in a sunlit morning. You won't let them be lost. Not like Suzy.

No, you won't fail them. Not this time.

You know how. You don't know, but you do. You've done this before. You haven't, but you have.

They are as confused as you feel. The eldest child cannot be more than eight years of age, but in the dark light of infinity, they all feel young. You smile, as you always have, and hold out your arms.

They look to you. At first, you don't know what they feel. Facial expressions are beyond you, no matter how hard you try. A smile is what you know. All you know. You press it harder. You hold your hands out in front of you. They follow the motion with their eyes. Out of habit, so do you. Old bones wrapped in young skin. Or perhaps young bones and old skin. You don't know the difference.

"Who are you?" they ask, their tiny voices a chorus to your senses.

"It's me," you say. It's all you know. All they can know.

They are drifting away faster and faster. You don't have much time.

"Please," you say. "Let's go home."

They watch you. Even now, in this dim place, you can see they are not whole. For your plan, they are unfit. But they are your children regardless. They are loved. You love them.

"I won't let them hurt you," you say. "Not again."

They flicker. The colour is seeping away.

"Please," you say.

They look away, as if someone else is there.

No. No, no, no. Don't go. You have so much love, you can spare all they need.

Shimmering hulls. Golden fleece.

You know this feeling. You know this soul.

No, no. Please don't leave. Not again. You can't take it.

You beg. You plead. It grins back at you. It's a game to it. Your love is nothing.

You scream.

Your children. You can't lose them again.

They turn to you, dust drifting. One reaches out, a young boy. He reminds you of someone. Your children all remind you of someone.

You take his hand. Your touch is soft, gentle. It is kind. Your love is kind.

Fingers—your fingers—drift over his soft hair. There's a scent you can't describe. You can't smell it, you haven't been able to for what feels like an eternity, but you feel it. It settles into your being and you embrace it as you embrace him.

"Jack," he mumbles. "My name is Jack."

Everything drifts back into place. The dull lavender of the pizzeria walls, decorated with the drawings your children have given each other. The air is heavy, no longer with the scent of food and music, but with a feeling you now know well.

Dread. You feel dread.

A loud sound. Someone is slamming doors.

The head guard eyes the others carefully. In a way, you sympathize. He has his children, you have yours. Yet you get the impression it is not quite the same. You get that a lot.

"What the literal _fuck_ was that?" he says. He points at a man who goes so still that you briefly think he might have become broken. "You said everything was fine. That the programs were fine."

"With all due respect, sir," the man said, "I don't think that was a program issue."

A woman next to him nodded. "The scripts are working as intended. The problem is that they only have standard events covered. We didn't have a contingency plan for… this."

You don't understand a word of this.

You crawl out of your box. You have things to do. They cannot be done here.

You catch bits and pieces. Things that indicate another move might be necessary.

You don't want to move. Not again. They moved you from that place to this place and now there will be a third place. And you don't think it'll stop there. No, this has to stop.

You're the one who needs this 'contingency' plan. You're not sure what the word means, not exactly, but you get the impression that it is desperate.

You are desperate.

You won't fail your family. You'll die first.

"There's something else." You can still hear the guards as if you were in the room. Technically, you are. You are the room. This is your realm, after all. "They're… behaving."

"No shit."

"No, I don't mean that. I mean the Band. They're acting outside the code. Someone's messing with the animatronics."

You pause, swinging slightly in hallway. No adults are there, but it doesn't matter.

"With all due respect—"

"Neumann, you say that one more time—"

"—there's not much there to mess with. They've got the best hardware Will thought he could afford, but no one is big on coding like that. Not since _WarGames_ and _Terminator_."

You inch along. More things you don't understand.

You reach the backroom. Normally you couldn't enter, what with the door being closed and you having no endoskeleton. But today it cracks slightly, pink plastic eyeballs staring at you from inside something fuzzy and purple.

Its expression doesn't change, but you can feel relief. The door opens just enough for you to drift in and it closes behind you just as gently.

"S-so, u-u-u-uh, nice seeing everyone to-today," Bonnie says, repurposing a line from the show. "Now what?"

Freddy is thinking again. You glance around in the silence. Chica is adjusting the empty heads on the shelves, humming one of the show tunes to herself.

"We have been compromised," Freddy says. In times of great trial, he is your voice. It's much better than figuring out how to speak without a mouth. Or voice box. Or both. "If we don't find some way to convince the adults we are perfectly normal, they'll—"

Chica gasped and turned around. "They'll make us gray, too!" She starts sobbing, choked sounds that sound more like some mechanical thing in the kitchen dying than any sound the other children make. "I do-don't want to be-be gra-ay. I like being yel-low! Gray is u-ugly. Yellow is cu-ute!"

Bonnie flaps arms about in the air, as rabbits are wont to do. "Whoa, whoa. No one said anything about that. Th-they won't do that. Ri-right?"

Freddy nods a few times. "No," he says, "they will."

Chica screams. Bonnie throws an empty Freddy Fazbear head at her. Luckily, the silence returns.

Yep. These are your children. Your pride and joy.

You have more work to do than you thought.

You lift up a hand. All three pause to look at you. It should be four, but you'll work with what you have. It's what you have always done. This is no different.

Freddy narrows his eyes, but obeys your will. "We can no longer help Foxy," he says. "During free roam mode, we need to be vigilant."

"I don't even know what that means," Bonnie says. Chica nods in agreement, dropping the empty head she was trying to balance on top of her own.

"Those children were broken," Freddy says. "And they can't be fixed. The adults aren't going to help us anymore. We need to protect our family. From them. From everyone."

No one says anything for a moment. A technician pauses outside the door, but seems to remember something that needs doing elsewhere.

"Only us, then," Bonnie says.

"Only us."

"The adults—"

"Mother will find a way to take care of them," Freddy says. "Like she always has."

Bonnie looks to you, as if asking for confirmation from the source. It's the first time in years one of them has acknowledged, directly, that you exist. It's exciting. Exhilarating. Probably some other words you can't think of at the moment.

You nod. Mother is always watching, you say. Her love reaches through you, to them. You are a conduit. Love is first most. Your gifts are second most.

Your gifts…

You have so much to give, yet you are at a stalemate. You want your children, the ones borne of steel, to be just as capable as those of flesh. The ones that can leave your realm. But you don't understand how. There's something you're missing. Those souls. But how to make souls?

You remember Jack. Jack is here now. He can't leave either. Not now. Not anymore.

You have ideas. You have desires. You have ways.

"Holy Jesus Christ on a goddamn _pogo stick_."

You didn't notice the door open. Your children did, as now they are as still as when the curtains are drawn. But you? No, you're slipping.

You don't turn to face them. There's no point. You can see them just as well from your position in the mainframe.

It's the woman and an adult-child. He doesn't have his wound anymore. He must be the other one.

"Well, uh, this-this is unexpected," the child says.

"We turn our back on the Prize Corner for one moment," the woman says. "One!" She mutters aimlessly to herself as she fiddles with your children, running those 'codes' that make them enter their standard free roam. She points the end of a wire at you, wearing an expression you don't have a word for. It usually means the children are upset.

"Scott, make yourself useful," she says. "Roll the Puppet back to the box, wouldja?"

The adult-child glances at the woman, then to you, then back to the woman. Without a further sound, he takes you by the arms and gently rolls you down the track.

It's awkward. The adults don't like handling you. You don't like being handled. Usually they leave you be when you're outside your box. And this one has never seen you outside, as far as you remember.

He's muttering. You hear him say something about a brother. That explains a lot. He continues, saying something about tetanus. You're not sure what that means, but you've definitely heard the word before. Usually it involved the head guardian talking to parents about leaving their kids in Pirate's Cove.

It makes you slightly uneasy. And it adds a new feeling to your growing list. Guilt. You feel guilty. You don't know why or how, just that the children feel it and so do you.

Well, that's a lie. You know why.

You're just above your box, legs dangling over the front. The child looks at you blankly. You return the favour. It's not like you have any other choice.

"Well, uh, I have to. I have to handle a few things," he says. He shuffles in place.

He sees you.

And yet, now that it is you and this wayward child, alone, you don't know what to do. You get the feeling that even though he sees you, he doesn't quite see all of you.

He sees you thinking. He can't see your love.

You smile, as you always do. The shuffling intensifies before he excuses himself and leaves.

That one is a freak. Yet you can't stop smiling, metaphorically speaking. He's a freak, yes, but now he's one of your freaks. One of your many, many, _many_ freaks.

Yes. You definitely have more work to do than you thought.

* * *

 **A/N:** We now bring you back to the crazy you came for instead of the crazy I threw at you last chapter (and the crazy I'm gonna throw at you next chapter whoops). A side note: the first four chapters were pre-written, essentially. Kinda. I have decided to rewrite the majority of the fourth chapter, and after that I have to begin chapters from scratch. So updates won't be quite as ridiculously fast, as now I have to do more in the same time period. Assuming I use said period to write. Which I have a terrible habit of not doing.

I do plan on finishing this story, of course, but be mindful that there is no (rigidly set) schedule. I'm terrible at those. Worse than my ability to juggle. And schedules are like juggling time. What I'm trying to convey is, you do not want to see me juggle physical objects. Or any object. But definitely not the physical variety. Don't invite me to parties.

Again, any advice is welcome. Thanks for your time, and have a good one!


	4. frigeo, cor fit petra

Oh, uh. Hello? Hello! Well, it, uh, it's certainly something, isn't it? I suppose you probably don't want to hear any more. I-I can't really blame you for that. Uh, it's definitely something I'd avoid, if I hadn't lived it. It's weird, thinking about it, really. I mean, I'm dead, right? I shouldn't be thinking about it all. I shouldn't be _thinking_.

But, uh, I'm going to talk about it more. Just to get it out. Maybe then it'll stop hurting.

Now, after all that, I started to realize something was, uh, wrong. Really wrong. I-I mean, I knew something was wrong before, but this was a, uhm, Come to Jesus Moment, I guess. I started getting really, uh, distant towards my brother. Which is understandable, really, I mean, all things considered.

Fazbear Entertainment was booming, despite everything. When my brother and I were eighteen, we applied for jobs. I mean, in the contract our uncle signed with Fazbear, it said that any of his relatives could apply for just about any position in the restaurant. Just, uh, just not executive positions, unless they franchised out a new building. I think you could get discounts on the franchise fee, but uh, that was never an option for me, so I never looked into it. Why bother, right?

We were both hired for day shift guards. There was an, uhm, incident that happened during the day that the Management didn't want a repeat of. Which I don't know anything about. At all.

Now, keep in mind, uh, this instance of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza was a pretty big establishment. Half of the building was a restaurant, with the other being a dedicated arcade room. In the weird kind of No Man's Land between the two were the the Party Room and the Prize Room with the Puppet.

Yeah, one of those things isn't like the other.

The Puppet. I-I don't even know where to begin with it. It wasn't like the other animatronics. I'm-I'm not even sure it was one, to be honest. I just tried to avoid it. My brother was fascinated by the thing, though. I mean, I guess I could understand that. But I honestly just preferred watching the pizzeria side or the arcade side. I wasn't getting near the Puppet. Ever. Most of the rest of the staff tended to follow that.

For the most part, I stuck around Pirate's Cove. I'll be honest, Bonnie and Chica creeped me out too much and being around Freddy was just awkward. So for two years, I made sure everything around Pirate's Cove was, uh, safe, I guess.

Parents were always concerned about Foxy since he was the most energetic of the animatronics, walking around the most when he wasn't performing. And maybe that's why the parents disliked him so much. I mean, aside from the pointy teeth, and the hook, and—

Well, okay, I can see the concern.

Working there though, things were weird. The animatronics tended to avoid the adults if they could. I mean, I could understand why, being programmed to entertain the kids and all, but it always felt fishy, in a way. I guess I noticed it mostly after being around Foxy so often.

Foxy went places he wasn't supposed to. Now, uh, you see, the security grid and the animatronic AI were set up on the same mainframe. If it wasn't on the security cameras, the animatronics couldn't go there. In an, uh, interesting choice of concern, the arcade side of the building was removed from the grid so the animatronics couldn't go there. They didn't want the animatronics accidentally squishing a kid into the arcade cabinets, or something like that.

But Foxy sort of, uh, blatantly disregarded this rule. I'm not sure how. I think it's because the animatronics were divided up on the mainframe based on function. Freddy and the band were on one mainframe, while Foxy was on a different one, since his sideshow was independent. A-at least, that's my theory.

So when Foxy peeked out from behind the curtains in Pirate Cove, it was my job to keep an eye on him.

"What's the matter, Foxy?" is what I would normally say.

The normal response was a quick, "Cap'n, there's been ships sighted on the starboard side!", usually followed by the vulpine charging out into his performance area, even though there weren't any children.

But today was different. I'd only been working at Fazbear's, officially, for about five days, and already things were going to get weird.

That large, cartoonish head tilted this way and that. I guess he was thinking—sorry, processing. The animatronics don't think. I wasn't trying to imply that. Anyway, it probably wasn't good, but there wasn't much I could do. I figured he'd spout an error code and I'd have to grab a technician. And then, well, that'd be that. But he didn't.

"Whar be Suzy?" Foxy said, his mechanical voice grumbling.

It caught me by surprise, I'll admit. "Who?" I asked.

He crept out of the curtained off area, his fingers drumming on his hook. He looked oddly sheepish, on one hand, but on the other hand he was shaking, and I'd never seen the animatronics shake before. "Suzy," he repeated. "Whar be Suzy?"

You, uh, gotta understand. The machines in Fazbear's were advanced, but cheap. Even if Will had gone to the effort of installing a system where animatronics could repeat a child's name, it shouldn't have been something that stayed in their, uh, temporary memory. And in all of the shows I'd seen Foxy do that day, all the cheering kids, there wasn't a 'Suzy' among them.

"I don't know a Suzy," I told him.

The shaking just seemed to intensify. "Whar be Suzy?" Foxy said.

I held up my hands. "Look, uh. What's she look like?"

"Suzy," Foxy said again. "Whar she be? Suzy? A pirate caen't be without his first mate."

Before I could do anything, Foxy was slinking off toward the arcade. I'll admit, I didn't really do much when it struck me he wasn't coming back. I trailed after him, stammering and trying to convince him to head back to the Cove, but he wouldn't listen. How do you convince an animatronic to do anything anyway? I mean, they'd do whatever they wanted anyway, right?

The head day guard was talking to one of the parents conveniently, or uh, inconveniently, standing in Foxy's way.

The head guard looked at Foxy, who stopped and looked back, then looked at me. "What," he said, "are you doing?"

I told him Foxy was malfunctioning. He nodded a few times, then looked at Foxy. "Whatsa matter, bud?"

Foxy tilted his head again. I knew he was asking for an error code, but I also knew he'd never get one. "Whar be Suzy?" he said for the umpteenth time.

The parent clutched at her heart as the head guard froze. "What did you say?"

Foxy arched back, his muzzle pointed at the star-decaled ceiling. "Whar be Suzy?" he said. And then, as if purely to disturb us, he started to _wail_. " _Whar be Suzy?_ Suzy, lass, ol' Foxy caen't find you! Whar ye be?"

"Hey, hey," the head guard said. "Keep your voice down, okay?"

By now a group of concerned parents were either leading their kids away or holding onto the woman the guard was talking to before. Her face was red, her dark eyes shimmering, and I didn't need to know anything else about the situation to know why. Guilt tugged at me and I shuffled in place.

"Suzy, lass, don't do this to ol' Foxy! Don't go whar he caen't follow!"

"Scott, don't just stand there and grow moss," the head guard said, grabbing my arm. " _Do_ something!"

What was I supposed to do? I'd only been there a few days. Wasn't _he_ supposed to do something, not me?

I don't think what I ended up doing is what he wanted me to. But then, I'm not sure he knew what that was either.

I turned and ran for the backroom.

Lopez, the onsite technician, looked up. "Hey," she said. "You look like a ghost."

I started to speak, but she held up a hand.

"Don't worry about it, Scott. I heard the yelling even from back here. Just relax. I've got this."

That was probably the first time I realized something was very wrong at Fazbear's. Not just that bad things happened there, but that it was a bad place. But there had to be a logical explanation, I told myself. There just had to be.

Foxy ended up slumped in the corner of Pirate's Cove. 'Out of service,' a small sign in front of the curtains said.

It took a few months for everything with Foxy to settle down. He was up and running in no time, sure, but in the meantime I didn't know what to do.

I shoved my hands in my pockets, leaning against the wall opposite the curtains. At the time I was having a, uhm, an 'existential crisis'. I thought that the animatronics going haywire was the most disastrous thing that could happen on the job. Even in hindsight, knowing it wasn't, at the time it was… it was unthinkable, really. It was hard to smile, to be the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. I think… I'm not sure what happened. But I think something broke in me that day. I don't know if it was my will or-or what have you. But I just couldn't stop smiling.

"Scott."

I didn't squeak. I want that to be known. I was caught off guard, sure, but I did _not_ squeak. Honest. I _did_ stand up straight to face the speaker, relaxing only when it turned out to be Lopez.

"He—"

Lopez didn't waste time with little things like pleasantries. "You. Backroom. Now."

The backroom, occasionally called backstage by people who remembered there was a stage to begin with, was a small, dinky little room that was very, very tiny. Miniscule. Uh. It was cramped, that's what I'm trying to say. And filled with heads. Empty heads, of course. But it was still pretty, uh, un _comfortable_.

Lopez gestured to the desk in the corner, where the camera couldn't see. A small box with a multitude of wires coming out of it sat on the desk, with some more wires connecting it to an old brick of a computer. Personal computers weren't a thing yet—by the way, that's really cool. I mean, you... you have a computer in your hand. That just boggles my mind. Uh, a-anyway, personal computers weren't a thing yet, so I didn't exactly have any sort of training to deal with it. That was my father's vocation, and my brother's to an extent.

Luckily, Lopez _was_ trained and didn't feel the need to humiliate me. She typed in a few command lines, pressed a button on the other box, and sat while everything processed itself.

"Are you free this weekend?" she asked as green text flickered on the screen faster than I could read it.

"Uh?" I said eloquently.

"Great. How's Saturday?"

I babbled as she leaned towards the screen, looking for something now. I was pretty sure she was messing with me. Pretty sure. Positive, even.

She scooted her chair back and pointed at the screen. "Look. Here're the lines of code I'm talking about."

I stepped forward to look at it. Whatever it was that was written in green text looked completely like gibberish to me. Not even in a "it's all Greek to me" kinda way, more like "someone punched a calculator and called it a day" kinda way. A scientific calculator, even.

"I'll explain," she said. I must have looked as stupid as I felt, because she started taking it nice and slow. Or at least, she used small words. "This code here wasn't put in with the rest of the program. You can tell because it's been added at the end, completely orphaned from the rest of the script packets. Script packets are the commands the animatronics use for things like the show, interaction events, and other situations. If this was a legitimate script, it would have been put in this packet here—" She pointed at a blotch of green that scrambled itself at her touch, even if she couldn't reach it through the glass. "—labeled EMER01. Those're the emergency scripts an animatronic uses during an interaction event, specifically when a child is in danger and needs the help of a staff member."

"Oka-ay," I said slowly. It was a lot to take in, or maybe it wasn't, but I was pretty sure I had it down either way.

"This script has been orphaned specifically. I don't think anyone trained in programming put it in, because they'd know where to put it."

"So, uh, how'd it get there? What does it do?"

Lopez shook her head. "I don't know what it does. Not yet. I'm working on it." Her dark eyes flicked from the screen, to me, then back again. "The only way to find out is to run it."

"Can't you, er, determine that based on the components used in the… code?"

She smiled, but not in the kind of way when people are happy. It was kind of unnerving. "Yeah, that's how it should be. But whoever put this in knew enough of the code to make it entirely from scratch. None of the commands it orders make sense based on the other scripts. It's not only unconnected, but it contains behaviours the animatronics were never meant to have."

That's when it clicked. "And you figured out the other codes based on watching the behaviours of the animatronics," I added. She nodded and I started rambling and she kind of just let me do it. "So of course you can't figure it out if it's completely new behaviour. That means whoever did it actually knows the system used to write in the AI."

"AI is sort of generous to describe what this is," Lopez said. "But essentially, yes. Someone who either created the language used to code the animatronics did it, or they're smarter than I am. Which I doubt."

I shook my head. "Why the person that created it? Why not someone who just studied it?"

"We get our hardware from a company known as Genesis Horizon. Will— _Mister Fazbear_ chose them specifically because they're not only cheap, but their software codes aren't factory standard. You have to get certified to use things like their coding language and other stuff."

"So that means…" I let it trail off, hoping she'd fill in the rest.

She didn't disappoint. "That means no one understands it. GH stopped running code cert classes a few years ago, shortly after they discontinued their hybrid suits." She tapped the desk a few times, making the computer screen flicker as if agitated. "You and I are the closest they—and we—have to certified techs here."

"I don't—"

She pointed the finger that had previously been assaulting the desk at me and I froze. "You're the only person here who actually paid enough attention to how to get in and out of the spring suits without ending up a Rotisserie chicken. That makes you a techie, far as I'm concerned."

I nodded dumbly. "Okay," I said, "but that doesn't explain how someone who knew enough of the code to make a new behaviour didn't know enough to put it in a package."

"Packet. Close enough, though." She rubbed at her temples, squeezing her eyes shut. "That's the part I don't understand either. They knew, but they didn't know. I just don't get it."

I nodded slowly, even as she looked at me with that dark smile from before.

"You have no idea what the hell just happened here, do you Scott?"

I shook my head. "Not a clue."

She stood, gesturing that it was time for me to leave. I sort of numbly walked to the door as she started talking more about codes, not bothering to dumb it down. It was starting to make me regret not going to college for anything more advanced than just saying, 'Hey, I bothered to do this consistent thing with my life. Please hire me.' Maybe I could change my major and no one would say anything.

"Oh, and Scott."

I turned to face her. She was grinning, one hand on the edge of the backroom door. I felt my stomach drop.

She gave an exaggerated wink. "Don't forget about Saturday."

I opened my mouth, but the only thing that happened was the door shut in my face, making me take a step back.

I came to a fairly logical conclusion: coding wasn't the only thing I didn't understand in that room.

The orphaned script wouldn't become important until three years later, in 1985.

It was early morning. At this point I was, uh, sharing an apartment with my brother. As far as I knew at the time, there were no more, erm, 'incidents'. I'd lifted up the newspaper to stare at a picture I couldn't quite make out. Printing errors were the bane of my existence. That, and I was starting to become paranoid that I'd need glasses. I looked like a twelve-year-old in glasses. Not just that, but the kind of twelve-year-old that gets their head shoved in toilets and lockers and all that other 'fun' stuff.

For reference, I was twenty-one.

Being twenty-one didn't stop me from screaming like a twelve-year-old when I put the paper down to find my brother leaning over the table, grinning at me like a psychopath.

"Why," I asked dully.

My brother sat back down and put his chin in his palm, rolling his head around like a schoolgirl that had a secret. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. "I heard something interesting," he said.

"Oh no."

"You know the classic suits, right?"

I frowned slightly. "Y-yes?"

He must have noticed my hesitation, because he just grinned wider. "I listened to those tapes you recorded regarding those things, and I heard you talk about a 'safe room'. I was wondering if you knew where the safe room was where we worked."

I was expecting him to ask something else, but this was much worse. "Uh."

"Succinct as always."

"Y-yes," I said, mildly annoyed. "I know where the safe room is."

"Then I bet you got the memo Cross sent out, right?"

Despite him being the head guard, Cross and I didn't talk often. Especially since I ran away when Foxy had that little 'error'. I don't think it was because of any bad blood between us, but more of the fact that he didn't know what I was doing working there. That made two of us, really.

"No, I don't think I did."

"Cross said we need more room for the spare parts, so we're using the safe room for that."

"We already do that."

"No, I mean—" He left out a deep breath, running a hand over his hair. "Will doesn't give a flying fuck about what we do, right? It's all done through his son—isn't his name Scott, too?"

"Skylar."

"Whatever. Anyway, it's all done through his son, who happens to be head of our building's management."

"As we all know."

"Yeah. Cross tells us what the brat wants, but let's be real, no one pays attention to what's going on."

"O-kay," I said, still not sure what this conversation was doing. I'm not sure the conversation knew.

"So why don't we—why don't we make them pay attention?"

I stared at him blankly.

My brother continued, steepling his fingers as if this was a legitimate business practice he was proposing. "Will doesn't care about the children. His son doesn't care about the establishment. And Cross doesn't care about us. Let's make them care. What better way to do that than let them know something's wrong with the way things currently are?"

I swallowed hard, but I couldn't look away from that grin on his face. "What did you have in mind?"

He briefly glanced away, as if thinking about it. When he looked back to me, his grin parted to show teeth. "I've got at least five things on my mind."

The hybrid suits were still being used in what the staff called 'interaction events'. I mentioned those earlier in that coding, uh, exposition. No one paid anyone in the hybrid suits any attention, since the springlocks could fail at what everyone considered to be any moment. Someone bleeding out as they tried, and probably failed, to get to the safe room would be an uninteresting but unusual sight. If I heard Lopez correctly, any of the animatronics not involved in a show or event at the time of a bleed out would drag, er, I mean, _help_ an employee to a spot near the safe room. Since, you know, they can't enter the safe rooms themselves.

In a sick, twisted sort of way, it was exactly what my brother wanted. No one would look our way, no one would question what we were doing. I wondered when my brother came up with this plan and how long he'd been waiting to drag me into it and I realized it didn't matter. I wasn't going to let him bully me into this. Not anymore.

So I told him that. I told him that whatever he was doing, he could do it on his own. He seemed to think about that, so I let my guard fall.

"Do me a favour then." His smile softened and he lowered his voice. "When it goes bad, look in the safe room for me. I'll try to hold out until then. Can't be that bad, right?"

I worked my jaw, trying to make it seem less like the thought bothered me and more like I was trying to dislodge something in-between my teeth. I had a feeling I failed. "Look, just because I'd be there doesn't mean I could completely prevent a springlock failure."

"I'm not saying that. That's not what I'm saying at all."

"You're implying it," I said.

He looked more amused than off-put. "So, you'll do it?"

"I never said that."

His smile widened. I just frowned in response.

Freddy was the beginning, in a lot of ways. The beginning as far as I knew it, anyway. Maybe there was someone else I didn't know about. It didn't matter then, and it-it probably doesn't matter now. I wanted it to be over just as much then as I do now.

It wasn't necessary in the company policy to indicate who was wearing the hybrid suits on any particular day. Ten people could wear one suit in the same day and we'd never know who unless there were witnesses. Which there probably would be, since ten people being in the same suit at regular intervals without down time would increase the risk of mechanism failures. Th-that was beside the point, though.

I got the old Fredbear suit, often called Golden Freddy by the staff that hadn't been around in the seventies. Not that they were wrong. My brother ended up in the original Bonnie. I ended up watching him carefully. M-more so than usual. That had been the suit that failed the first time, and I had no intention of explaining to Cross or Wilhelm or Lopez how my brother ended up in it should everything go wrong.

At the time, I wasn't even sure how to get the things open once they failed. I learned it firsthand much, much later, to my personal disgust. But at the time I was expecting every motion to be a subtle signal of the end. In a way, I guess it was, but not in the way I anticipated.

It was recommended that actors in the suits take the occasional break when available. When the suits were first issued, this was impractical due to the way interaction events worked. Either the actors had been in the suits to begin with, or the endoskeletons were. There was no time to change out in either scenario.

But now there was time. Not necessarily for that, and not necessarily for the plan, but there was finally enough time.

The first child was a young girl. She was separated from the others, running around and laughing all the while. She ran from parents and friends and strange children alike, and the animatronics didn't seem to know what to do with her. They left her alone. They all did.

In a sick way, my brother was right. No one was paying attention to what mattered. Despite everything, I… I'm not sure they ever did. Or ever will. It just doesn't end.

A young boy. Two elder boys. Another girl.

My brother led each of them away, one by one, to the safe room. I never knew what _exactly_ he did to them back there, just saw the end result. And frankly, that was still too much. I never wanted to see that much blood ever, ever again.

He never got any on his suit. I told him that was reckless, but he just laughed and waved me off.

I avoided looking at the mess he managed to make, instead piling the suits into a corner. "So what now?"

When I turned to look at him, he was making another show of thinking about it. "Welllll," he said, "the kitchen _does_ have a meat locker it doesn't use anymore."

"That old power waster? You're just going to—?"

"Yep," he said. "That's all I got."

I braced myself against one of the decommissioned arcade cabinets. "Fine," I said. "But my part's done. I'm not helping you anymore."

"Sure, sure," my brother said, his grin never faltering. "By the way, have you thought of taking a day off sometime? You look like you could use it."

I'd told him days ago I could feel the beginning of a cold. He never said anything then. I knew he had an ulterior motive. He always did. He'd planned this part too; it was oddly well-thought out for him. Too thought out.

"How many does this make it?" I asked, focusing back in on him.

He looked up at me from where he was posing them on the floor, like some sick game of house. "Huh?"

"How many kids?"

"Ohhh." He laughed softly. "I thought you were asking about—never mind. Gee, including Suzy, since I guess that one was still me, that would beeeeee, ah." He paused, blinking as he actually put thought into it.

"On second thought," I said, "I don't want to know."

My brother stood, wiping dirt off his slacks. "Look, seriously," he said. "Take a day off. The next step... well, you don't want to be around for it."

"I didn't want to be around for this," I said, gesturing around the room.

That just seemed to amuse him. "Right, right," he said. "But the next part, after hauling corpses to the locker, involves our unpredictable little pirate. I've been working on _that one_ a while, lemme tell ya."

"Huh?"

My brother frowned slightly. "Man, I can't even have a Bond villain moment around you. Very anticlimactic." Before I could respond, he shoved me into the corner of the cabinets and the wall, his hands tightened into fists around my uniform. "Look, I'm going to _encourage_ you to _take a break_ in the _near_ future, or I'll _make_ you. How's that sound? Better?"

"I'll, uh, be honest," I said. "The emphasis is kinda scary."

He grinned, despite having threatened me seconds ago. "Really? Thanks, I've been working on that in my head." His smile softened again. "So you'll do it? You'll take a day off?"

"I never—" I stopped, watching his face. It never even so much as flickered. If I said the wrong thing, would I be next? "I—" The smile widened just a fraction, though maybe my mind was playing tricks on me. I sighed. "Yeah, I'll-I'll do it."

He stepped away from me and let out a whooping cheer, just quiet enough to keep it inside the four walls, but just loud enough for me to seriously start questioning my life choices again.

I got that day off about a week later. It was about mid-afternoon when I got the phone call.

"H-hello? This is Scott."

"Scott, it's Cross. It's about your brother."

I froze. I thought to myself that this was it. I was going to jail and I was going to die and my father was going to disown me and I'd get buried in a potter's field somewhere and—

"He's in the hospital."

"Oh," I said. Then it clicked. "Oh! What-what happened? What's going on?"

"Well, that's. That's the weird thing. We haven't pinpointed what went wrong per se, but we think one of the animatronics went haywire. We need you to come in and help us clean up a bit."

"I—"

"I know, I know, you're sick. Just help us put the animatronics back in their places and Lopez can take you to the hospital."

"You already sent her to my apartment, didn't you?"

"See?" Cross said. "You're getting the hang of this."

Cleanup was easy. Sure, I had to touch the Puppet ("What's it doing in the backroom?" "Hell if I know."), but aside from that it was relatively easy. It was the awkward ride in the hospital with Lopez that I found almost unbearable.

It was like she knew. The way she kept looking at me. She knew, she knew and there was nothing I could do to stop her from doing anything about it.

Finally, she spoke.

"Guess Saturday's off, huh?"

I sighed in a mixture of relief and an entirely new anxiety. "You've said that these past three years and I still have no idea what you mean by it."

She looked at me from the corners of her eyes, smiling slightly. "I'm asking you on a date, Scott."

"Huh?"

"You never said no."

"I-I. Uh?"

She laughed. "You're a riot, you know that?"

I opened and closed my mouth a few times before I figured out what I was trying to say. "Isn't-I don't. I thought the guy's supposed to do the asking?"

"What, are you saying women aren't allowed to express interest first? Wow, maybe I'll start burning bras or something. How dare you."

"Wha-? No! I'm just-"

"I'm teasing, Scott," she said.

I sat there silently. I still had no idea what was going on.

"You just need to get out more. I talked to Callum about it; he agrees with me."

I nodded, just trying to avoid saying anything to that. I wasn't sure I could. So I did something I was becoming fairly good at. "What room is he in, by the way?"

She pointed at a piece of printer paper on the floor, under my shoes. "Cross wrote everything down on that. I told that man he needs to learn how to use sticky-notes or something. That printer shit's expensive."

"It doesn't have the room number."

She sighed. "Yeah, somehow I figured it wouldn't. Hope you're good at winging it."

"Huh?"

"Just look like you belong, Scott. You're good at that."

Compared to hospitals now, where you have to have your ID out and undergo a small background check just to visit someone, we just sort of waltzed in. The elevator wasn't working, so we took the stairs, where I learned I needed to exercise more and Lopez was more fit than any ten people I knew.

"Maybe we should go to the gym on Saturday," she said.

"Maybe-maybe I should just get a new pair of lungs," I said. "Or a new body entirely."

She looked amused. "Well, that would solve a few issues, but I'd miss seeing your dorky little face."

I looked up at her, frowning slightly. "I'm dorky?"

She laughed. "Oh, honey, that's not even the start of it."

After talking to a rather bored nurse at one of the desks, we found my brother's room fairly easily. It was off down a side hall, all the way at the end.

The nurse walking out nearly had an aneurysm when she saw us coming down the hall. "Why are there two of _you_?" she asked, pointing an accusing finger at me.

"Twins," Lopez explained as we brushed past her. I smiled apologetically. I didn't really understand the nurse's frustration, but I had a feeling I was about to.

There's always something fundamentally wrong about seeing a family member in the hospital, tubes and wires flowing this way and that. It was that awful reminder that it doesn't take much to break someone.

Despite the fact that his entire upper chest was covered in gauze, my brother smiled as we walked in. "Ahh," he said. "I can hear the wedding bells now."

"Oh, don't do that," I said, amused and exasperated all at once.

"Yeah," Lopez said. "I'm not sure I want a moron like you for a brother-in-law."

"Ow." It was strangely comical coming from someone who had bigger wounds to worry about. "That was just cruel."

"I'm not sure what else you were expecting," she said. "You touched an animatronic that has been recorded to not like being touched. And it was malfunctioning to boot. That's pretty stupid in my book."

My brother sort of stared at her. "Ow," he said again. Only it didn't sound like he was trying to lighten the mood anymore.

"Anyway," Lopez said. "I'll be outside in the parking lot if anyone needs me. Nice day outside."

"Go feed some birds for me," my brother said. He laughed as she gave the respective hand gesture on her way out.

I waited a few minutes before pushing the door to its frame.

"The Dodgers are kicking ass this year, huh?"

I turned to him in confusion. "What?"

"Well, Valenzuela is." My brother wasn't even looking at me. He was watching some baseball game on the old TV in the corner. He looked back at me. "I'm very good at pretending I know what I'm talking about."

"You're good at pretending a lot of things," I said. I walked over to the side of his bed, looking around. Someone else was supposed to be in the room, but their bed was empty. "What'd you do this time?"

He sighed, rubbing at the right side of his face. "I… I might have messed with Foxy's emergency override codes."

"What."

"Don't give me that look!" He started clenching and unclenching the bedsheets in his free hand. "Look, I didn't know what they'd do. That's why I wanted you out of there. If he'd swung at you instead of me, then…"

I looked at the extent of the damage. Judging by the fact that his chest was lightly dressed, it got off fairly light. It was his arm that got the brunt of it. His entire left arm was rigged up in some sort of stabilizing sling. Or something. I pointed at it. "Are you ever going to be able to use that again?"

He worked his jaw slightly, making the smile on his face move around oddly. "If the doctor isn't lying, it should be fine. Missed most of the important stuff in there."

"He didn't... he didn't bite you, did he?"

"You kiddn'? Foxy's jaw is barely strong enough to lipsync, let alone bite someone. Nah, that was his hook. Both times."

It was my turn to rub at my face. "So you put that extra code in all those years ago."

It was my brother's turn to look confused. "Huh? No, I _found_ that extra code that was never activated. All I had to do was rewrite it, add some conditional coding, and then package it up to match the other bits."

I looked at him carefully. "But you wrote it. Right?"

"I _re_ wrote it. C'mon, Scott, I'm the one hyped up on drugs here, not you."

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. None of this seemed right.

"You know what would be hilarious?" my brother asked. He was watching the TV again.

"What?"

"The good ol' A's against the Giants in the World Series. I'd kill to see that mess."

I just stared at him until he looked back at me, which made him grin sheepishly. It was... weirdly human. "Too soon?"

"Yeah," I said. "Something like that."

* * *

 **A/N** : Well, that took longer than expected. Sorry about the wait. This would have been up several days ago, but since this was originally two chapters, it took longer than usual to condense. I figured it made more sense all at once, though, since the previous chapter dealt with the last part of this one. That's my excuse for the beginning of a long road of schedule slips. (cough) This is a lot of build up, but I swear things are going to get interesting Soon(TM). Since this is a mostly character-based story and all, the idea of buildup probably seems... weird.

OKAY, one thing though: should I list the year each chapter occurs in? A review or two might have alerted me to the fact that the time frame is a little toooo subtle/confusing. Let me know if the pacing's okay, too. Have a good one, guys!


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